The Budos Band w/ Benny Trokan

w/ Benny Trokan

Friday, July 18th 2025

Charleston Pour House

Main Stage

7:30pm doors /8:30pm show

$32 advance / $35 day of show

Two years after releasing the Frontier’s Edge EP, The Budos Band are returning with their first full-length since 2020’s Long in the Tooth. Titled simply VII, the new album sees them doing what they do best: laying down hypnotic, horn-spiked grooves that menace and mesmerize in equal measure.

Produced by Budos guitarist Tom Brenneck with Simon Guzmán engineering, VII features 11 tightly constructed new tracks that draw on the group’s wide range of influences, sounding like only The Budos can. It’s music for getting down, for nighttime drives, and for alternate headspaces — a beguiling mix of mystery and rhythm that stands with the formidable work they’ve released in their two decades of recording.

“We didn’t really go in there with a concept on VII,” drummer Brian Profilio says. “It was the first time in two years that we were together in a studio so we were like, ‘Let’s see what happens.’ We ended up writing 11 songs in three days.”

These 11 songs run the gamut, featuring sweaty, hard-hitting funk workouts like “Escape from Ptenoda City” alongside explorations of Turkish psych in “Night Raid” and Zambian rock in the riff-heavy “Overlander.” It continues the stylistic evolution the group began with 2014’s striking, shake-things-up album Burnt Offering.

“It’s almost like we’ve refined the sound we were going for on Burnt Offering,” Brenneck says of VII. “It’s not quite as raw.”

“That’s the genreless aspect of the band,” saxophonist Jared Tankel agrees. “We’re not Afrobeat, we’re not Ethiopian jazz. We’re not world music. We’re not really funk, we’re not soul. We’re not rock. We’re just an amalgam of all these different sounds, so things pop out in all directions when you listen.”

As usual, these songs are chopped up and splashed with the heavy horns so integral to The Budos sound, weaving melodies through the muscular rhythms and even deepening the groove when it calls for it.

“Horns can occupy a melodic space, even though it’s not a voice,” Tankel says. “They can also occupy an articulated and rhythmic space. Playing with that duality is cool.”

VII was recorded in California and serves as The Budos Band’s first full-length album on Diamond West, the independent label founded in 2023 by Tankel and Brenneck. It’s also the group’s first album to include instrumental contributions from percussionist Rich Tarrana, who previously played in the Frightnrs. All told, it succeeds in opening up some new sonic spaces while staying tethered to the intuitive, unique musicality that made them such a sensation from the jump.

“Sometimes it’s like we’re speaking some esoteric language that no one else understands except us, and we’re doing it wrong,” Brenneck says. “It’s like how the Stones tried to play the blues and they missed the mark and they made something new — everything The Budos tries to do, we do wrong, and it sounds like The Budos.”

Most of us became aware of Benny Trokan’s solo work via his debut 45 for Wick Records in 2018. The b-side “Turn Back You Fool,” a 12-string-centric ballad becoming a much passed around record in the Souldies scene of Southern California. However, the recording was only the beginning of the latest chapter for Trokan, who’s been performing in bands for over 20 years. “Do You Still Think of Me” is the New Yorker’s first solo full-length release.

Trokan made his entry into the recording field as part of the band Robbers on High Street, releasing three LPs before hanging it up in 2011. That’s when the calls for his bass skills started coming in. Benny quickly joined the ranks of some of his favorite bands - Lee Fields’ Expressions, The Jay Vons, Reigning Sound, and Charles Bradley’s Extraordinaires. He also had a brief stint in Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings and more recently was drafted by stalwart Austin rockers, Spoon, contributing to their Grammy-nominated album “Lucifer on the Sofa.”

Daptone’s Gabe Roth invited Trokan out to cut the tracks that would become “Do You Still Think of Me” at his newly christened studio, Penrose Recorders, in his hometown of Riverside, CA. With longtime friends and musical associates, Mikey Post (drums) and Morgan King (bass), Trokan recorded 11 songs, cutting most of the lead vocals live. Says Benny of the process, “Gabe’s style was to go for live vocal takes. He’d then edit the tape to make a comp based around the vocal performance - the verse from take 3 with the chorus from take 1, that kind of thing.” Trokan later returned to do additional overdubs with acclaimed Daptone producer/engineer Wayne Gordon.

Some of these tracks were released as “Hey Lovers” a digital EP out in 2022. The eponymous track is a cover of a Lou Rawls penned song Trokan first heard years ago on the b-side of a Five Emprees 45, and became a bit of a guiding light for his sound.

“I like to think that someone discovering my music is similar to the feeling I get finding a record I’ve never heard before, or flipping over a 45 to find out that the b-side is really where it’s at. Those are the songs that always do it for me,” says Trokan. “The ones longing to be on the a-side. Or maybe they’re just too cool or too sad to care about the a-side.”

There’s definitely a lot of longing in Benny Trokan’s music. From the moody teen-beat bop of “Save a Place,” the garage dwelling angst of “Nowhere to be Found,” to floaty, slow soul title track “Do You Still Think of Me,” Trokan takes us through the spectrum of 60s influenced music. All the while with his unique rasp a wail or a whisper, and his 12-string Hagstrom a-chiming a la The Dovers or The Poets.

“Don’t get me wrong, I love being a band guy, sideman, second-banana, whatever; the pressure is off and I just get to have fun and play. But I think I had a bit of frustration, being around these amazing musicians and singers without an outlet for my own stuff.”

The pros in the trade have known about Benny Trokan for a long time, and it felt like only a matter of time before he came into his own as a solo artist. “Do You Still Think of Me” comes through as a well-seasoned debut album, well worth the wait.

* Show is 21+. Attendees under the age of 21 must be accompanied by a parent or guardian. Attendees under 21 will be subject to a $5 surcharge. The surcharge must be paid in cash at the door on the day of the event.

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